|
|
Posted by dorayme on 10/01/34 12:01
In article
<479e7120$0$10842$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au>,
"asdf" <asdf@asdf.com> wrote:
> The 'design' of the product is a description
> of how the product should look, how a product should function, how a product
> has an emotional impact upon the user, how a product interacts with it's
> physical space.
>
> The 'engineering' of a product is working out how to achieve all of the
> above, to design a *process* or *technique* as to how to make the vision of
> the product a reality.
>
You are interested in the history of the manufactured product and
all the processes that go to make it happen. And you distinguish
various phases and aspects of its construction. Fair enough. But
i am interested in something rather different. I am thinking a
dead designer, a dead manufacturer, a live product and a single
knowledgeable critic and thinking about how he looks at this
product and what he might say by just inspecting the product.
We all know what a complete abortion threatens when these two
aspects are divorced by division of labour. I refer to clueless
designers handing their photoshop ideas to poor schmucks like us.
Ah, you say, but not all designers are clueless. No? Which ones
are not? The ones that are pretty clued up about what is
possible? What is possible engineering wise? So if they are so
clued up how come they don't finish the job? Ah, they are not
that cluey! No? So when the engineering expert comes along he
'makes it possible', he "instantiates the idea' without altering
the idea because he is the expert in instantiation.
Frankly I simply don't buy this picture in the details. The whole
show if it results in a great product may well have a messy
history. But when it comes together, there are not two things
which can be prised apart, the engineering and the design. For
crappy things, yes, for superficial aspects of design, yes, but
not for more than this.
You cannot simply take a great product and make it a different
way (keeping 'the design') without making a different product.
> Sometimes the engineer will also be the designer, sometimes the designer
> will also be the engineer. No matter... conceptually the two things are
> quite clearly distinct.
>
> BOTH activities together go to make the finished product.
What would establish me very wrong are plenty and plenty of pairs
of products with the same fantastic design but *quite different*
engineering. I don't believe it happens much in the real world.
--
dorayme
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|